Network is important, but how?

Emre Sharbak ‍(Co-founder @Patika .dev)

Hello everyone from our new post where we take a lens on another part of your tech career. In this blog post, we are talking about: your business network.
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The topic of networking is a topic that everyone knows the importance of, but can hardly predict what the appropriate strategy is. That's why we brought this issue to our agenda. Before discussing the topic

• will try to define the business network,
• It will be important to him,
• will talk about the potential benefits,
• will share our thoughts on creating a business network
• and finally we will present our recommendations on the first contact to develop the business network.‍

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What is a Business Network?

A business network is your own social space that you build with people within your industry. It is the relationships you establish with people within the framework of the qualities that you have in the context of your career and that you aim to have in the future.

The business network arises from the intersections between the job itself (e.g. programming) and the person doing the work (programmer) and the intersections that you are involved in because of one of the parties to that intersection (programming or programmer). Thus, a business network is the totality of interactions with work and with people who do business.

Such relationships, in your résumé, GitHub in your profile and shows itself as a reference, follower, link or 'project partner' in your accounts on other digital career platforms. But as I said above, your business network is your gigantic social space beyond that.

Why do we need a business network in spite of this?

Why is Business Networking Important?

Because now all of the characteristics that organizations are looking for for the relevant position are not only about having the technical skills and training that the job requires.

Today, institutions look not only at technical skills, but also at social skills that a person has. In other words, when recruiting, institutions try to understand the level of technical skills of a person, as well as to understand the level of their social skills.

The business network, which is an aggregate of the candidate's development resources and background, serves as an important source of information for institutions.

So how can you work this function to your advantage? How can business networking be useful to you?‍

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What Are the Potential Benefits of Business Networking?

Speaking about the benefits of a correctly formed business network, I can summarize:

• Thanks to the business network, you can learn the priorities of the sector for which you have prepared yourself.
• Thanks to the business network, you can learn about the growing, promising institutions of the sector.
• You can acquire knowledge of institutions in which you can further develop yourself.
• You can get acquainted early with institutions with good working conditions.
  

In short, your business network can give you access to information that you can only notice as a result of long experiences that you cannot find through an internet search.

Based on all this, your business network means that the individual and social relationships you have accumulated become a credit in your professional life. Your business network makes it clear that you are socially and individually stable to the other party, not as a personal accessory acquired quickly from yesterday to today, but as an accumulation.

The characteristics of your business network, the weights it holds reflect your competence in a particular job. For example, the fact that you have significant contact with people or institutions that carry out the programming profession in a socially beneficial way in your business network can tell a lot about the institution you are applying for. It can show your approach to your profession, by what principles you make room for your profession in your personal life. The fact that you have contact with people who work mainly in certain programming tools and languages explains that you also have a tendency to those programming tools and languages from the past to the present.‍

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How should we build a business network?

One of the ways to build a real relationship with people in your industry is of course social media platforms. But business networking can't just be reduced to adding on social media platforms.

Business networking is building a qualified relationship with people in the industry you are targeting. The way this naturally develops is by intersecting with such people as you try to improve yourself. Business networking, therefore, is not “connecting” with people in your industry on social media, but building learning-based relationships that you initiate with them in various contexts and maintain at a certain level. For this reason, the business network is built on real relationships within a certain context, even if brief, one-time.

“The basic principle of business networking is to be able to build trust through any partnership. “

One of the ways to start this is to interact with people who are already in your immediate vicinity or even with people who are close to them. So you can make your trusting relationships that you already have become part of your business network.

Similarly, reaching out to people with whom you have various partnerships but no contact is one of the initial steps in creating a business network. For example, you can look for people with whom you graduated from the same university. The various partnerships you have with these people (same school, same club, same hobbies...) can help you develop your business network.

Reaching out to people or institutions that everyone follows will not serve you to show off your unique qualities. For this reason, try to reach out to the people or institutions with whom you share your unique characteristics. If you are someone who loves to play games and is interested in designing games, you should find and contact people who work on this topic. Going one step further, you need to find people who don't just design games, but who design games the way you love-target. Moreover, you can make an attempt to create a more efficient business network, as fewer people reach the people you feed with in a characteristic similar way.

In the same way, if you are trying to build a business network with organizations, you should target not the employees of the human resources department of the organization, the engineers and developers that you think you may have in common.

If you have entered the software field from a different field, you can come from a different field like you and try to reach people in the industry. This is an important partnership.

You can try to add people you have volunteered with at the same institution in the past to your business network. ‍

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So How Do We Talk?

First of all, you should research the person you want to join your business network by trying to find what you have in common with. After reaching these people through Linkedin or other media, you can try to have a short conversation. You can start this conversation by introducing yourself. You can tell about your studies, skills. Then you can say that you want to hear that person's suggestions by talking about your dilemmas and goals. You can try to understand what this person you are in contact with by actively listening. That is, you can ask after listening to the points that sound interesting or different to you, among what has been said. These questions can bring up many important points about your industry, your profession that you did not know, that you have never noticed before.

By summarizing what you understand at the end of the interview, you can confirm the results you have achieved, highlight what you have learned and show the other person the importance you attach to this conversation. Before you finish the conversation, you can politely indicate that you want to hear about career opportunities around the person you are interviewing, that you are open to support in this regard. However, you can tell the person you are interviewing that you can also help with various issues.

Remember, describing your situation and plans well makes it easier for the other person to make point-scoring suggestions.

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There are other things that you should pay attention to when conducting a conversation in this minvale.

You should communicate your request for opinion, suggestions, not all channels of the person concerned, but only through one channel.

You should also not be in the position of a person who wants something directly throughout the conversation. This form of communication, in addition to being rude, has a limiting effect on speech.

You should be aware that the person has the right not to respond for any reason. ‍

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The universal principle of business networking is not to act with an obvious business networking agenda. This process is essentially a nutrition initiative in terms of your career. Therefore, the inclusion of the person concerned in your network is only one outcome of this nutritional initiative, not the whole.

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